CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? - AT 11:01 P.M. ET:  It seems that Britain has imported at least one beloved American institution - the lawsuit.  And who benefits?  If this seems like old home week, it is.  From Britain's very leftist paper, the Independent:

The cost of fighting clinical negligence claims against the National Health Service is soaring and most of the payouts are going in the pockets of lawyers, figures show.

In one case, a law firm received 58 times as much as the victim. In each of the past five years there have been examples of lawyers receiving more than 10 times the sum paid to the victim in compensation.

There have been 52,000 clinical negligence claims over the past five years which have cost the NHS more than £8bn. More than one in 10 – 5,500 – has resulted in a legal bill bigger than the victim's payout. On average lawyers received £36,000 per case last year whereas victims received £15,000.

The figures were obtained by the Tories in response to parliamentary questions. Shadow Health minister Mark Simmonds said: "Taxpayers will be rightly angry that hundreds of millions of pounds of their money is being paid out for mistakes in the NHS and that in many cases lawyers get their hands on more of the compensation money than the patients.

"The Government could have saved significant sums of money if they had listened to our proposals for an initial fact finding stage before a case comes to court. This would have resulted in more cases being resolved without costly litigation, and there would have been more money for frontline patient care."

COMMENTS:  You know, I don't want to impose on our British cousins.  But there's a medical-malpractice lawyer here who may want to change residences, and who really is terrrific.  His name is John Edwards.  Used to be a senator, ran for president and vice president.  Has had a few marital problems.  Dynamite in a courtroom.  And if some law firm got 58 times as much as the victim, why John can get 80 times the amount.  If anyone in Britain wants him, just e-mail us.  We'll send the request on to his mistress, uh, office.

December 17, 2009